An Alternative to Joys & Concerns...

Sometimes it feels like we hear from the same people every week during Joys & Concerns. What about the people sitting quietly in the pews who don't feel comfortable standing up and speaking into a mic about their trials and tribulations, their successes and gratitudes? Do we honor their journeys, giving the hurting and vulnerable in our midst an opportunity during worship to process their concerns and gratitudes? A strong pastoral prayer can do this but a participatory prayer can be even more effective.

This Hand Meditation is an alternative, maybe not every week, but on some sort of regular basis...

Open your right hand. Look into the cracks, lines and crevaces. Here we place our personal concerns and those of people for whom we care deeply. . . We are tired and weary. We have overextended ourselves and need to say “no, not at this time” more often. We worry for people facing chronic illness or other medical challenges…people, maybe ourselves, who are in transition…who feel despair and loneliness…who are in conflict with others or with themselves…people for whom hope feels far away…We hold their needs and our own with reverence and care.  

(pause)

Now open your left hand. See the interplay of the lines of life. Here we place our joys, our delights, our celebrations, the unexpected blessings that reassure us.

We raise up the joy of new life, new beginnings in relationships, in work, in life choices. Many things have worked out well. We and those we care about have faced and met challenges, overcoming them. We wake up to revel in the beauty of Nature, the rewards of living in community, times when we’ve opened our hearts to small and large moments of grace in our lives…

(pause)

Place your hands together.

Life is a balance of these things and through the strength of community, we know that we and our loved ones will receive help through prayer and good works.

Written by Ellen Snoeyenbos

Bless these, our circumstances,

Bless the hardship and the pain as well as the delight.

Bless the hunger and the thirst as well as the abundance.

Bless those things that do not turn out right as well as those that do.

Bless those who take all and give not and also those who love.

In these circumstances, find growth.

In growth, discover clarity.

            In clarity, an inner vision.                                    

(Nancy Wood, adapt. by Victoria Safford, White Beak Lake UU, Minnesota)